Risk is a word I’ve looked up numerous times because it is a word I want to get to know better, from the inside. I know that in order to live the big, full life I want, and to feel fully alive, I have to get intimate with risk.
My etymological dictionary says, “the ultimate origins of risk have never been satisfactorily explained. English acquired it via French risqué from Italian risco, a derivative of the verb riscare meaning “run into danger.”
I thought “run into danger” was accidental. As in, you could randomly happen upon danger as you are going down the path of life, like an old friend you haven’t see for years who happens to be in the same spot you are. It isn’t until now, looking it up yet another time, that it occurs to me that “run into danger” could be a deliberate act.
With risk, you don’t just happen upon danger, you consciously run right for it, run right into it because you want to. (See photo for example!)
This is the kind of warrior I want to be. I don’t want to run into danger for the sake of danger, but I want to always be consciously willing to face danger head on. I want to move toward it. I want to walk into it awake, upright, breathing deep and being willing to meet what might come rather than running in the opposite direction or doing everything I can to avoid it entirely so I stay, safe, comfortable and hidden.
I haven’t always been willing to do this. In fact, I still don’t know if I really am willing or if my body will allow it even if I have made up my mind to do it. What I do know is that “safe, comfortable, and hidden” is killing my soul, and the pain of that is getting stronger than my fear or running head first into danger.
The dictionary defines risk as the “potential of losing something of value” and also “as an intentional interaction with uncertainty.” This is something that life forces us to do—to learn how to develop an intentional interaction with uncertainty or insecurity. In my experience this is what creates value.
Running a business of my own design, being an artist and sharing my work, being a parent, and losing my home to foreclosure are some of the biggest learning platforms I’ve had for interactions with uncertainty that have led me to a deeper understanding of value. I can’t say it was intentional, but more and more so it is.
Through all of it I have been led to live from this question:
What risk must I take to be at home in my life and experience my value?
What risk must YOU take to be at home in YOUR life and to experience YOUR value?
For me, the risk I must take is expressing truth. This is something I am continually learning how to do. To express the truth of who I am and the truth of life as it is. No polished edges.
It can be dangerous to invite truth to sit down at your kitchen table or to join you in your most intimate spaces. It can nourish you AND it can smash you (and your life as you know it) against the rocks with its power. Oh yes, and I recall one dictionary saying the root of risk literally means, “to sail dangerously close to the rocks.”
Risking our truth is what sets us out to sea to encounter the world. Risking our truth is also what brings us home.
When we encounter the truth, we know it. When we encounter truth we experience love—love for ourselves and love for others—because there are no false filters keeping us separate, protected, numb (and dry).
One of my favorite, honest writers, bell hooks, says this:
“To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Breaking through this denial is always the first step in uncovering our longing to be honest and clear. Lies and secrets burden us and cause stress.”
So what does this really mean? How much risk are you willing to take on?
Only you can answer that question.
I am learning about this in my own life. Each time I write a poem, a blog post or a chapter in my book, I have to ask myself this question. How much risk am I taking on, how much danger am I willing to run directly into and face, how much am I willing to tell and reveal the truth?
The risk is in the writing.
The risk is in the willingness to then make that truth visible for all to see.
How dangerous is it for you to do that? Are you ready to run into it?
Are you ready to write and share it?
I hope so because the world needs your words and the kind of bravery it takes to face, and then expose, the dangerous truths and uncertain longings of your human heart.
(And believe it or not, that wave in my photo didn’t even get me wet!! But it did get my heart pounding!)